Thursday, July 07, 2011

The Defeatist Attitude

The defeatist attitude hovers around one like a vulture, hoping to swoop in and pick up the remains of a wounded ego. It encircles a soul bubbling with frustration, telling it in a deceivingly soothing tone, that giving up is the best choice, it’s the right option, a man has to do what a man has to do and so on.

The skin vibrates and the brain keeps expanding and contracting in a break-point throb. Finally, the human volcano ruptures, pushing one into a state of paroxysmal rage, heart beating wildly with impatience, until agitated motor neurons wrap the fingers around an object, wanting to fling it onto the glass table in the room corner, imaginatively fully destroying both and not doing a bit to relax the impulse that has grown irritated of dormancy.

The anger plunders one of all rationality; thought is unbecoming and a thoughtful absorption of the consequences unwelcome. The only controlling aspect remaining now is emotion, which as it turns out, can manage to turn around its contagiously damaging ego by administering, in the human being, a feeling of guilt by which it may realize the extent to which the fingers have actually extended themselves. This new drug, which although cannot do anything to extract the anger within, can sometimes inject itself deep enough to momentarily paralyse the movements and stop the carnage.

The anger condenses from a lightening and thunder cloud into a river of denial and then comes the quid pro quo of bargaining. Its not fair. The complaints pour out. Arguments follow and the unjust words pelt the human conscious like rain on a car windshield in a midnight forest. In the foreboding darkness enough time is given for changes to occur, resulting in a thick steam that blocks everything except the guilt that is the only key to accessing the dominion of self-control.

Then slowly, just so little-by-little, true to the miraculous nature of the whole colour spectrum paying obeisance to the sunrise and floating along the rays of the morning star, the wind of clarity arrives to play its part as it blows away gently at the black ashes of the angry soul, tenderly unclothing it of the remnants of the scars of ire, caressing it with a cold breeze that drives away the hawking spirits.

Its ok if it isn't fair. I'll just have to get along with it.

And so high emotion downshifts and heads into the slow lane, content to be left behind, knowing it has been subdued. The veracity of the matter appears as white-robed hope. The bells of acceptance ring.

Maybe we can't win everything in life.

Maybe its impossible.

Maybe we might not even like to, because it'd most likely be at the expense of others.

Maybe sometimes we are too involved in ourselves to understand what we'd really like to have.

The raising of the hands signifies acceptance. The handshake signifies unity. The leaving signifies its all over.